Bill Shorten accused of derailing NDIS reform as 2021 comments come back to bite

In 2021, Bill Shorten downplayed fears of cost blowouts in the NDIS while in opposition. Now the Scheme is on track to cost $90 billion. Here’s how his comments came back to bite him.

The Opposition has slammed NDIS Minister Bill Shorten for previously undermining reforms to the Scheme, accusing him of lying to people in the disability sector.

In 2021, Mr Shorten led a campaign against the Coalition, which was warning the NDIS was on track to cost $60 billion a year by the end of the decade.

At the time, Mr Shorten said the Morrison government “haven’t proven mass rorting” and infamously compared claims of cost blowouts to being as credible as Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.

In a press release he accused the Morrison government of “releasing false financial information to hype its claims of NDIS budget blow outs... to justify further cuts”.

Under heavy pressure from Mr Shorten and disability lobbyists, the Coalition was forced to scrap a controversial measure for all new NDIS applicants to undergo an independent assessment from a government-employed health professional.

Bill Shorten, while in Opposition claimed the Coalition “haven’t proven mass rorting” in the NDIS.

Now, in 2024, the National Disability Insurance Scheme remains one of the fastest-growing items in the Federal Budget and could end up costing $90 billion a year by 2030.

There are now 650,000 participants involved in the scheme.

Last week, the NDIS Agency’s Head of Fraud, John Dardo told Senate Estimates around $2 billion in taxpayers money was still being rorted, including for illicit drugs, prostitutes and luxury items.

Mr Dardo cited fraud examples “just in the last week” including a $20,000 holiday and a $73,000 brand new car, with the taxpayer funds being processed overnight.

Having been in Government for two years, Mr Shorten claims the issues with the NDIS “are worse than I thought”

Mr Shorten has now conceded “the problems are worse than I thought” but insists he wasn’t aware of the extent of the issues until after he became Minister.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Opposition NDIS spokesperson Michael Sukkar said: “Before the election - Bill Shorten was telling disability advocates that nothing was going to change in the NDIS, that it was just the terrible, nasty Liberals who were saying it was unsustainable.

Opposition NDIS spokesperson Michael Sukkar has accused Bill Shorten of lying to the disability sector.

“I suspect that he knew precisely what the issues were with the scheme, but used it for political purposes and in the process lied to people in the disability sector.

“The galling aspect of the NDIS, the thing that gets people’s blood pressure up is you’ve now got genuine families and children with disabilities waiting twice as long to get a plan.

“But on the other side - by the admission you have at least $2 billion going out the door on fraud, including heroin, meth, cocaine and prostitutes.”

Labor has claimed their ongoing reforms to the scheme will “offset increases in NDIS payments of $14.4 billion over four years.”

A spokesman for Bill Shorten said the NDIS under the Albanese government “is what sustainability should look like” but declined to address Shorten’s 2021 comments directly.

“For 10 years the Coalition locked the front door of the NDIS to Australians with permanent and significant disability and left the back door open to fraudsters and crooks,” he said.

“We have shut the back door and … we are putting a stop to the middlemen who have been using the NDIS as an ATM.”

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